


On the other side of the world, the sky is the same shade of blue

by HeleneInTheClouds



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Angst, But mostly angst, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lowkey inspired by my actual thoughts, M/M, Post-Canon, i think this counts as angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28629303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeleneInTheClouds/pseuds/HeleneInTheClouds
Summary: Percy thinks about his mother.
Relationships: Henry "Monty" Montague/Percy Newton
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	On the other side of the world, the sky is the same shade of blue

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for vaguely implied sexual assault, Monty saying the word ‘shit’ and lots of projecting.
> 
> This is my first tggtvav fic and I have no idea what I’m doing.

The grass tickles my cheek as Monty and I lay on the grass behind Platt’s house. He has his eyes closed and the setting sun makes his eyelashes glow gold. 

We have been here for a while, though none of the servants have missed us yet. When we arrived we’d quietly gathered up a group of servants who accept our love and paid them double. After London, we were happy to share our house with people instead of cockroaches. They enthusiastically joined our charade of convincing the nobles Monty was Platt himself.

“Darling, are you all right?” He murmurs.

“I am thinking about my mother.”

“Oh Perce...” Monty presses a kiss to my cheek without opening his eyes.

“When I was little I’d go to bed and wonder who she may be. Whether she looks like me and if I would ever meet her. Even if I’d manage to go to Barbados, how would one find one woman from years ago?”

Nobility has a habit of talking around subjects, a practice my aunt and uncle refined into an art form. Never uncivil, but never honest. Always smiling, yet always holding back.

It was the reason my childhood self adored Monty so. Uncivil and blunt, he could laugh as if the world belonged to him and him alone, and make me believe it too.

The day one of my aunt’s friends said more than intended, her art diluted by the wine, I learned of the reason my mere existence unnerved people. 

“My apologies, Lady Stephens for not understanding,” I had asked exactly as I was taught to, “what do you mean by slavery?” 

My aunt had asked me to leave the room and I spent the rest of the evening with my nose in dictionaries and encyclopedias.

“Did you know this?” I had asked Monty later, when we were in the garden, away from curious ears.

He merely shrugged. “Those books are full of shit.”

“But you have heard it before?”

“You know I don’t listen to anything the governess says. You shouldn’t either, then we may finally steal a kitchen tray again.” 

“That’s not an answer. I’m serious.” 

“Yes, Percy. I have. Father explained it to me. I think it’s ridiculous.”

“Because your father said it?” Even then I knew Monty refused to listen toanything that came out of his father’s mouth.

“Because I know you, silly!” He pulled my hair and smiled the smile that made me believe we could take on the world together.

  
  


“I like to think she loved me.” I say. “To think that she celebrated all my twenty-one birthdays.”

“Darling,” Monty replies, “I hope every single thing you think is true. Out of the two of us, at least one deserves adoring parents.”

I stare back at the sky, afraid to share the other things I regularly think. The things I pondered at night when the moon was bleak and my future happiness seemed so far away. Does she think of me on my birthday at all? Or did she try her best to forget I never existed? Does she regret ever letting me go?

“Anyone who not adoring you would be a fool to.” Monty jokes, but I do not listen.

As we grew older and taller (though it was mostly me who grew in height), the boys in our circle started to whisper about girls. 

Monty’s eyes wandered easily, but however hard I tried, my mind only pictured his blue eyes and the ivory skin under his cravat.

One scandal involved a girl who married hastily, and, like nobility does, they talked around the truth. Nobody ever told me the girl had not wanted the marriage, that she had caught the wandering eye of a noble’s son. This time, I did not need books to find out.

Was that how it had happened in Barbados, fourteen years ago? Did my father’s eyes wander to rest on hers?

“I could have been an accident.” I say. “I could have been unwanted.”

Monty does not say anything to that.

“What kind of woman leaves a child to be taken to another continent, to a world where it will never meet other eyes coloured like earth?”

“That sounds like a poem dear. A sad poem.” Monty pushes himself up on his elbows until his face is above mine.

“Do you remember what you would tell me, when we were ten and we talked about these things?”

“They met in Barbados and it was the kind of true love you read about in fairytales. But they could never marry, separated by class, colour and conventions.”

“That’s a far nicer poem. And?”

“And she is a woman who loves her child more than the selfish desire to stay together.”

“And?”

“She is a woman who knows the harsh reality of her country, and wishes for her child to be well.” 

“And?”

“A woman who knows her child deserves a better future, one she will never be able to give.”

Monty strokes the side of my face and I feel like I could burst into tears. 

“Now you made it sad again.”

“I have fine clothes of cotton without ever gathering it. I have a house of stone and servants to make my bed.” I recited. “I am greeted by nobility without scorn, I can speak as if I am your equal.”

He lays down next to me again and the grass covers the burnt side of his face. “You are my equal. My partner in crime. Lord, if I had to run this estate my fingers would fall off from writing that many letters.”

He takes my hand and squeezes. “If she were in heaven, I think she would be proud to see you now.”

“Run away from an asylum, managing the estate of a dead man in a scam?”

“You really need to write happier poems.” Monty huffs. “With the person you love, despite class, colour and conventions.”

“I believe,” I nudge his shoulder mockingly, “We were rich together and poor together. Partners in crime, were we not?”

He turns his head to me, but misjudged my height when he lay down and his chin falls on my shoulder instead.

“If she is alive, I bet she looks up at the sky and thinks of you.” He whispers as he awkwardly tries to wrap his free arm around me. “On the other side of the world, the sky is the same shade of blue.”

He laughs. “See Perce? I _can_ rhyme.” 

In that moment I have never loved him more.


End file.
